Recollect the Snow
by polar-realm
Summary: FFVI. Celes visits a traitor in prison, or perhaps she visits a friend. Either way, there are things she has to think about, and truths she has to face. Terra/Celes.


Winter in Vector has never been kind. The cold cuts through coats and scarves, into the city's Fire-warmed halls, and by mid-afternoon, the shadows are already angled sharp, the light distant and etiolated. And there's no Fire magic to heat the rooms here, nothing but a few too-bright galvanic lights, but Celes wears no coat or shawl, only cloak and armor, and her breath doesn't steam in the frozen air. She has not much use for kindness, and cold doesn't bother her, hasn't for as long as she can remember living, but something about the atmosphere here seems to reach deeper. It isn't the cold, but for all her best efforts, she cannot claim to be impervious to every weakness.

Given a choice, this wing of the Palace is not one she cares to visit often. Magic is deadened here, damped by mechanical contrivances born of Cid's genius and set at regular intervals along the walls, and the air feels dull and artificial, leached of something invisible and essential as oxygen. She feels the field settle over her, like the unpleasant tingling of blood returning to a limb that had fallen asleep, but she's been here before, and she knows that the twisting in her stomach this time, the impulse to turn on her heel and run that grows with every step, is more than just the weight of His Imperial Majesty's preternatural prison sinking in beneath her skin. So she doesn't run. She curses herself for cowardice beneath her breath, and presses on, keeps her pace easy and her hands unclenched as she approaches the tower cell that holds the first and last person she ever called friend.

The door to Terra's current habitation is flanked by two guards with rifles at the ready and, more deadly, a pair of magitek-enhanced hounds. The beasts growl at her approach, spittle-flecked jaws and raised hackles, spurred to the edge of violence by the madness that infusions so often carry. The Empire keeps its witch under heavy guard, these days. They have to. The walls are thick, the door locked and barred, but the soldiers take one look at her and step aside, accede to her demand to unbar the way and let her speak to the prisoner alone. The sound of keys turning in one lock after another is heavy and dull as iron, and Celes thinks, as she pushes the door open to reveal a small, bare chamber, that at least they've given her a bed to sleep on, and left her unchained.

At the sight of her there, though, seated on the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair falling lank across her face, it doesn't seem as much a mercy as it should be. She seems so much like another shadow, drawn thin, too small for her skin, and it occurs to Celes to realize that she's been looking like a shadow for a long time, and she doesn't remember when it stopped seeming wrong and started seeming natural. Terra looks up in startlement, quick indrawn breath and eyes wild with something that might be fear and might be rage, before settling back into a subdued wariness that doesn't fully fade when she sees her visitor's identity.

"I didn't think – " she says, and falls silent, whatever impetus had momentarily animated her seeming to drain away and leave her emptier than before. She doesn't look away, though. Her eyes are steady, and the light from the high, barred window reveals the pallor in her face and the dark circles beneath her eyes with uncompromising clarity, but despite everything, despite looking for it, Celes can see no recrimination there. She wonders if this would have been easier, if there were.

_You didn't think they'd let me see you_, she thinks, or maybe, _you didn't think I would._ And what she wants to say, viciously, is _you _didn't_ think,_ _you should have known they'd catch you, that you couldn't win against them_, but what she says is, "Are you comfortable? They haven't – "

A quick shake of her head, a fugitive smile, gone too quickly. "They haven't hurt me yet."

"Good," Celes says tersely. She crosses the room in a few short steps, and kneels beside the bed like a mendicant, looking up. She doesn't reach for Terra, but Terra reaches for her, takes her hand, seeking comfort or contact or maybe just the heat that Celes has never been able to offer her or anyone else. But her skin is warm, nearly feverish even in the icy air, and when Celes offers her cloak, she shakes her head, saying only, "I don't need it."

That shouldn't sting like it does – one more stupid thing Celes has to give that neither of them need – but what she's here to offer is more than a cloak, and when Terra brushes a thumb across the back of her hand, the way she used to before either of them were soldiers, it's almost enough for Celes to make herself hope that this time, she'll listen.

"I've been given the Maranda initiative," she says. "It's my command, and I pick my troops by hand. You could march beside me, if you chose."

Terra says nothing for a long time, but her grip tightens on Celes's hand, and when she speaks again, her voice is carefully calm. "I'm a traitor, Celes."

It's true. She is. And Celes knows the penalty for treachery, just like she knows – or thought she knew, once – that the penalty is necessary, and deserved. But the closer she looks, the more it seems that the woman who believed that is not the one kneeling in this cell with snow piling up on the window-ledge and the heat of Terra's hand in her hand curling the corners of her certainty to ash, and she bows her head and tries to remember who she is and who she wants to be instead.

"If you take it back," she says, and something catches in her throat, sharp and bitter. "If you swear loyalty, and repentance – You know they'll pardon you. They have to. They need you."

"You think so?" Terra says, and then, quietly and very clearly, "It doesn't matter. I won't."

And Celes knows, though she doesn't know how she knew, that she had never expected to hear anything else. No repentance, no recrimination, not even anger, and any of those, Celes might have been able to face, but she cannot stand against this.

"I'm sorry," she says, and looks away. "I'll see that they get you a fire in here, and something to eat. I'll do what I can. I'll come back."

But when she tries to rise, Terra catches her by the arms and just holds her there, not even a pace away. She's startlingly strong, even thin as she is now, and traitor or not, Celes knows that if this is an escape attempt, she doesn't have the will in her to fight. But Terra only steps forward, closer than Celes has ever been to another person before outside of the chaos of battle, and looks at her like something inexplicable, a stranger with a familiar face.

"I'm sorry," Celes says again, and this time, Terra kisses her for answer, leans in and presses one hand to the small of her back, the other to the curve of her hip, unpracticed but not quite hesitant. Whether she's seeking comfort or offering it, Celes can't tell, but she's caught by it either way, the uncanny heat of Terra's skin and the way her fingers tighten in Celes's cloak, the suppressed echo of magic, powerful and desperate and trapped. Beneath her physical nature there's another indefinable quality, like the air outside and the winter light, the taste of snow and metal.

And then it's over, and Terra is stepping back again, the moment slipping too quickly out of reach. But the memory is undeniable, more than some fleeting, half-imagined pang of contact and desire, and the warmth where she had been lingers.

It changes nothing. Maybe nothing can be changed. But Terra made her choice, no matter that it isn't the one Celes wanted, and if Celes had nothing to give her, at the very least she will take nothing away.

"Go," Terra says, almost gently. It's weakness, perhaps, but Celes cannot disobey her.

When she leaves, she doesn't look back. She lets the door fall heavy behind her, and when she's out of sight of the guards and their mad, chained dogs, she does run, forces her body into motion until her breath burns in her lungs and the tastefully decorated hallway she finds herself in isn't one she recognizes. Candles cast their soft light from silver sconces along the walls, and there are paintings, fruit in bowls and bucolic scenes in shades of green and gold, too idyllic to be real. There's no winter here, in the heart of the palace, no biting cold, no pale light broken by cell bars. Celes leans heavily against the wall, calls up her magic just to feel the purifying chill of it at her fingertips, and she wishes that there was.

Celes is loyal. She has never been anything but loyal. She doesn't know how to be anything but loyal, and she is certain, because she cannot let herself be less than certain, that treachery cannot be forgiven. But when she raises a hand to her mouth, feeling the ghost of a kiss there, she doesn't know whether the betrayal is Terra's or her own.


End file.
